GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

OBJECTIVE UTILITARIANISM 339
truth ofthe multiplication table, just as the fact that religion
began in devil worship, Totemism and exogamy, does not
entitle us to conclude that it is not religion now.
Similarly, the fact that the desire for virtue began as a
desire for something else if it is a fact does not alter the
fact that it is desired for itself now; and, if it is so desired, it
invalidates the principle that happiness is the only possible
object of human desire.
Nor is it an answer to this argument to say, as Mill
does, that in being desired as an end in itself, virtue is
desired "as part of happiness". It is a matter of common
experience that so far from always promoting happiness,
the practice of virtue very frequently promotes the reverse.
Novelists and dramatists have made us familiar with the
antithesis between virtue and happiness, and one of the
stock conflicts of tragedy is the conflict between the desire
to act virtuously, on the one hand, and the desire to obtain
happiness by following one's affections on the other. It
is therefore, most unlikely, in the light of this common
experience of mankind, that when men strive after virtue,
they should always do so because they consider it to be
a part of happiness.
The View that Conduct Promoting Personal and Conduct
Promoting Others' Happiness are always Identical Incon-
sistent with Admitted Facts* Untenable in theory,
the assumed identification between the positions which I
have labelled A and C 1 is inconsistent with admitted facts.
It is, of course, perfectly true that society
takes care to
encourage those actions which benefit it and to discourage
those which harm it. Thus, as I pointed out in the first
chapter in the discussion of the position adopted by
Glaucon and Adeimantus, 1 there is a general presumption
to the effect that a man will obtain more pleasure from
socially benevolent conduct than from socially harmful
conduct. Honesty, in fact, is the best, if only because it is
the most expedient, policy. Again, as Butler pointed out,
1 See p. 332 above*
* See Chapter I, pp. 22-24.